So Indiana Jones laments in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the audience gets it. People generally do not like snakes. Maybe it’s the slit eyes. Maybe it’s the scales. Maybe it’s the creepy legless locomotion. Even the writers of the Bible, in Act One, human being Scene One, make the snake in the Garden of Eden Villain #1. It’s like we’re carrying a grudge or something.
My new novel from Severed Press is Curse of the Viper King. And, spoiler
alert, it has a giant snake in it, but the cover might have given that away.
In Curse
of the Viper King, Professor Grant Coleman and activist Janaina Silva are
lost in the Amazon. They come across a logging team and hope they can hitch a
ride home through them. But workers discover the remains of a giant snake that
send them into a superstitious panic. Then that night, giant spiders arrive.
The survivors of the attack find that their only hope for salvation lies in the
lost Aztec temple of the infamous Viper King. But they have to get there and
back alive.
The snake’s universal ability to induce
chills puts it at the top of my fictional monster list. But my giant snake
isn’t completely fictional.
Titanoboa was an actual snake from about 60 million years ago. Fossils of it
have been found in South America. It grew to an estimated 13 meters long (42
feet) and weighed about 1,135 kilograms or 2,500 pounds. It could coil around
your car with a lot of snake left over. That’s a major snake. In my story it
has survived in a lost pyramid in the depths of the Amazon jungle.
But this bruiser of a serpent likely killed
by constriction, which is way too slow for an action story. Imagine three pages
of “It squeezed him again.” So my snake is a cross with a venomous pit viper. These
things are lethal as hell. How about being injected with a gallon of poison
venom from a giant one? Definitely a mood killer.
But you say “How could a snake survive so
long in the pyramid?” There’s an answer there in science as well. Snakes do go
into periods of hibernation, called brumation, like the giant viper in the
story. Garter, queen, and corn snakes specifically do it, just not for hundreds
of years.
Sometimes it doesn’t take a lot of
creativity to bring a monster into the fictional world. Mother Nature has already
laid the ground work. Snakes are a great example.
You can find Curse of the Viper King here:
Russell James grew up on Long Island, New
York and spent too much time watching late night horror. He graduated from
Cornell University and the University of Central Florida. After flying
helicopters with the U.S. Army, he now spins twisted tales, including
paranormal thrillers Dark Inspiration, Sacrifice, Black Magic, Dark Vengeance,
Dreamwalker, and Q Island. His Grant Coleman adventure series covers Cavern of
the Damned, Monsters in the Clouds, and Curse of the Viper King. His wife reads
his work, rolls her eyes, and says "There is something seriously wrong
with you."
Visit his website at
http://www.russellrjames.com, follow on Twitter @RRJames14, or say hi at
rrj@russellrjames.com.
Interesting read. Having worked with venomous for many years, there are several points I could debate, technically, but then, I would be hypocritical in doing so. That's what writing fiction is all about, creating what reality says can't exist. I did the same in one of my stories about snakes and still deal with criticism from my herp friends. I constantly have to remind them that fiction has no limits. Good luck with your book! Looking forward to picking up a copy, soon.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments Richard. Good to see you here! :)
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